François Duvalier (French pronunciation: ​[fʁɑ̃swadyvalje]; 14 April 1907 – 21 April 1971), also known as PapaDoc, was the President of Haiti from 1957 to 1971.[3] He was elected president in 1957 on a populist and black nationalist platform, after thwarting a military coupd'état in 1958 his regime rapidly became totalitarian. An undercover death squad, the Tonton Macoute killed indiscriminately and was thought to be so pervasive that Haitians became fearful of expressing dissent even in private. Duvalier further solidified his rule by incorporating elements of Haitian mythology into a personality cult.

Prior to his rule, Duvalier was a physician by profession. His profession and expertise in the field acquired him the nickname "PapaDoc". He was unanimously "re-elected" in a 1961 referendum in which he was the only candidate. Afterwards, he consolidated his power step by step, culminating in 1964 when he became President for Life after another faulty election, and remained in power until he died in 1971. He was succeeded by his son, Jean‑Claude, who was nicknamed "BabyDoc".[4]

Duvalier was born in Port-au-Prince in 1907, son of Duval Duvalier, a justice of the peace, and baker Ulyssia Abraham.[8] His aunt, Madame Florestal, raised him.[6]:51 He completed a degree in medicine from the University of Haiti in 1934,[9] and served as staff physician at several local hospitals. He spent a year at the University of Michigan studying public health[6]:53 and in 1943, became active in a United States-sponsored campaign to control the spread of contagious tropical diseases, helping the poor to fight typhus, yaws, malaria and other tropical diseases that had ravaged Haiti for years.[9] His patients affectionately called him "PapaDoc", a moniker that he used throughout his life.[10]

In 1946, Duvalier aligned himself with President Dumarsais Estimé and was appointed Director General of the National Public Health Service. In 1949, he served as Minister of Health and Labor, but when Duvalier opposed Paul Magloire's 1950 coupd'état, he left the government and resumed practicing medicine. His practice included taking part in campaigns to prevent yaws and other diseases. In 1954, Duvalier abandoned medicine, hiding out in Haiti's countryside from the Magloire regime. In 1956, the Magloire government was failing, and although still in hiding, Duvalier announced his candidacy to replace him as president.[6]:57 By December 1956, an amnesty was issued and Duvalier emerged from hiding,[16] and on 12 December 1956, Magloire conceded defeat.[6]:58

The two frontrunners in the 1957 campaign for the presidency were Duvalier and Louis Déjoie, a landowner and industrialist from the north. During their campaigning, Haiti was ruled by five temporary administrations, none lasting longer than a few months. Duvalier promised to rebuild and renew the country and rural Haiti solidly supported him as did the military. He resorted to noiristepopulism, stoking the majority Afro-Haitians' irritation at being governed by the few mulatto elite, which is how he described his opponent, Déjoie.[5]

François Duvalier was elected president on 22 September 1957. Duvalier received 679,884 votes to Déjoie's266,992.[17] Even in this election, however, there are multiple first-person accounts of voter fraud and voter intimidation.[6]:64

After being elected president in 1957, Duvalier exiled most of the major supporters of Déjoie.[18] He had a new constitution adopted that year.[10]

Duvalier promoted and installed members of the black majority in the civil service and the army.[12] In July 1958, three exiled Haitian army officers and five American mercenaries landed in Haiti and tried to overthrow Duvalier; all were killed.[19] Although the army and its leaders had quashed the coup attempt, the incident deepened Duvalier's distrust of the army, an important Haitian institution over which he did not have firm control. He replaced the chief-of-staff with a more reliable officer and then proceeded to create his own power base within the army by turning the Presidential Guard into an elite corps aimed at maintaining his power. After this, Duvalier dismissed the entire general staff and replaced it with officers who owed their positions, and their loyalty, to him.[10]

In 1959, Duvalier created a rural militia, the Milice de Volontaires de la Sécurité Nationale (MVSN, English: Militia of National Security Volunteers)—commonly referred to as the Tonton Macoute after a Haitian Creolebogeyman—to extend and bolster support for the regime in the countryside. The Macoute, which by 1961 was twice as big as the army, never developed into a real military force but was more than just a secret police.[20]

In the early years of his rule, Duvalier was able to take advantage of the strategic weaknesses of his powerful opponents, mostly from the mulatto elite. These weaknesses included their inability to coordinate their actions against the regime, whose power had grown increasingly stronger.[21]

In the name of nationalism, Duvalier expelled almost all of Haiti's foreign-born bishops, an act that earned him excommunication from the Catholic Church.[11] In 1966, he persuaded the Holy See to allow him permission to nominate the Catholic hierarchy for Haiti.[22] No longer was Haiti under the grip of the minority rich mulattoes, protected by the military and supported by the church; Duvalier now exercised more power in Haiti than ever.

On 24 May 1959, Duvalier suffered a massive heart attack, possibly due to an insulin overdose; he had been a diabetic since early adulthood and also suffered from heart disease and associated circulatory problems. During the heart attack, he was comatose for nine hours.[6]:81–82 His physician believed that he suffered neurological damage during these events, which harmed his mental health.[6]:82

While recovering, Duvalier left power in the hands of Clément Barbot, leader of the Tonton Macoute. Upon his return to work, Duvalier accused Barbot of trying to supplant him as president and had him imprisoned. In April 1963, Barbot was released and began plotting to remove Duvalier from office by kidnapping his children. The plot failed and Duvalier subsequently ordered a nationwide search for Barbot and his fellow conspirators. During the search, Duvalier was told that Barbot had transformed himself into a black dog, which prompted Duvalier to order that all black dogs in Haiti be put to death. The Tonton Macoute captured and killed Barbot in July 1963. In other incidents, Duvalier ordered the head of an executed rebel packed in ice and brought to him so he could commune with the dead man's spirit.[23] Peepholes were carved into the walls of the interrogation chambers, through which Duvalier watched Haitian detainees being tortured and submerged in baths of sulfuric acid; sometimes, he was in the room during the tortures.[24]

In 1961, Duvalier began violating the provisions of the 1957 constitution. First, he replaced the bicameral legislature with a unicameral body. Then he called a new presidential election in which he was the sole candidate, though his term was to expire in 1963 and the constitution prohibited re-election. The election was flagrantly rigged; the official tally showed 1,320,748 "yes" votes for another term for Duvalier, with none opposed.[10] Upon hearing the results, he proclaimed, "I accept the people's will. ... As a revolutionary, I have no right to disregard the will of the people".[6]:85[16]The New York Times commented, "Latin America has witnessed many fraudulent elections throughout its history but none has been more outrageous than the one which has just taken place in Haiti".[6]:85 On 14 June 1964, a constitutional referendum made Duvalier "President for Life", a title previously held by seven Haitian presidents. This referendum was also blatantly rigged; an implausible 99.9% voted in favor, which should have come as no surprise since all the ballots were premarked "yes".[6]:96–97[10] The new document granted Duvalier—or LeSouverain, as he was called—absolute powers as well as the right to name his successor. The identity of the 0.1% is still unknown.

His relationship with the United States proved difficult. In his early years, Duvalier rebuked the United States for its friendly relations with Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo (assassinated in 1961) while ignoring Haiti. The Kennedy administration (1961–1963) was particularly disturbed by Duvalier's repressive and authoritarian rule and allegations that he misappropriated aid money—at the time a substantial part of the Haitian budget—and a U.S. Marine Corps mission to train the Tonton Macoute. The U.S. thus halted most of its economic assistance in mid-1962, pending stricter accounting procedures, with which Duvalier refused to comply. Duvalier publicly renounced all aid from Washington on nationalist grounds, portraying himself as a "principled and lonely opponent of domination by a great power".[10]:234

Duvalier misappropriated millions of dollars of international aid, including US$ 15million annually from the United States.[25]:50–51 He transferred this money to personal accounts. Another of Duvalier's methods of obtaining foreign money was to gain foreign loans, including US$ 4million from Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.[25]:47–48

After the assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963, which Duvalier later claimed resulted from a curse that he had placed on Kennedy,[26] the U.S. eased its pressure on Duvalier, grudgingly accepting him as a bulwark against communism.[10][27] Duvalier attempted to exploit tensions between the U.S. and Cuba, emphasizing his anti-communist credentials and Haiti's strategic location as a means of winning U.S. support:

Communism has established centres of infection ... No area in the world is as vital to American security as the Caribbean ... We need a massive injection of money to reset the country on its feet, and this injection can come only from our great, capable friend and neighbor the United States.[18]:101

After Fulgencio Batista (a friend of Duvalier)[18]:92 was overthrown in the Cuban Revolution, Duvalier worried that new Cuban leader Fidel Castro would provide a safe haven for Haitian dissidents. Duvalier attempted to win Cuba over by recognizing Castro's government by sending medicine and pardoning several political prisoners, but to no avail; from the very start of his regime, Castro gave anti-Duvalier dissidents his full support.[18]:93

Duvalier enraged Castro by voting against the country in an Organization of American States (OAS) meeting and subsequently at the United Nations, where a trade embargo was imposed on Cuba. Cuba answered by breaking off diplomatic relations and Duvalier subsequently instituted a campaign to rid Haiti of communists.[28]

Duvalier's relationship with the neighboring Dominican Republic was always tense: in his early years, Duvalier emphasized the differences between the two countries. In April 1963, relations were brought to the edge of war by the political enmity between Duvalier and Dominican president Juan Bosch. Bosch, a leftist, provided asylum and support to Haitian exiles who had plotted against the Duvalier regime. Duvalier ordered his Presidential Guard to occupy the Dominican Embassy in Pétion-Ville, with the goal of arresting a Haitian army officer believed to have been involved in Barbot's plot to kidnap Duvalier's children. The Dominican president reacted with outrage, publicly threatened to invade Haiti, and ordered army units to the border. However, as Dominican military commanders expressed little support for an invasion of Haiti, Bosch refrained from the invasion and sought mediation through the OAS.[3]:289

In 1966, Duvalier hosted the emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I, in what would be Haiti's only visit by a head of state under Duvalier.[18]:139 During the visit, Duvalier awarded Haile Selassie the Necklace of the Order of Jean-Jacques Dessalines the Great, and the emperor, in turn, bestowed upon Duvalier the Great Necklace of the Order of the Queen of Sheba.[18]:139

Duvalier's government was one of the most repressive in the hemisphere.[29] Within the country he murdered and exiled his opponents; estimates of those killed are as high as 60,000.[3] Attacks on Duvalier from within the military were treated as especially serious. When bombs were detonated near the Presidential Palace in 1967, Duvalier had nineteen officers of the Presidential Guard executed in Fort Dimanche.[10]:357 A few days later Duvalier had a public speech during which he read the attendance sheet with names of all 19 officers killed. After each name, he said "absent". After reading the whole list, Duvalier remarked that "all were shot".[25]:10–11

Haitian communists and even suspected communists bore the brunt of the government's repression.[18]:148 Duvalier targeted them as a means to secure U.S. support in addition to the principle: Duvalier was exposed to communist and leftist ideas early in his life and rejected them.[18]:148 On 28 April 1969, Duvalier instituted a campaign to rid Haiti of all communists. A new law declared that "Communist activities, no matter what their form, are hereby declared crimes against the security of the State." Those convicted of Communist activity were subject to execution, and faced having their property confiscated.[30]

Duvalier employed intimidation, repression, and patronage to supplant the old mulatto elites with a new elite of his own making. Corruption—in the form of government rake-offs of industries, bribery, extortion of domestic businesses, and stolen government funds—enriched the dictator's closest supporters. Most of them held sufficient power to intimidate the members of the old elite, who were gradually co-opted or eliminated.[10]

Many educated professionals fled Haiti for New York City, Miami, Montreal, Paris and several French-speaking African countries, exacerbating an already serious lack of doctors and teachers. Some of the highly skilled professionals joined the ranks of several UN agencies to work in development in newly independent nations such as Ivory Coast, and Congo.[citation needed]

The government confiscated peasant landholdings and allotted them to members of the militia,[11] who had no official salary and made their living through crime and extortion.[10]:464 The dispossessed fled to the slums of the capital where they would find only meager incomes to feed themselves. Malnutrition and famine became endemic.[11]

Nonetheless, Duvalier enjoyed significant support among Haiti's majority black rural population, who saw in him a champion of their claims against the historically dominant mulatto elite. During his 14 years in power, he created a substantial black middle class, chiefly through government patronage.[10]:330 Duvalier also initiated the development of François Duvalier Airport, now known as Toussaint Louverture International Airport.

Duvalier fostered his cult of personality and claimed that he was the physical embodiment of the island nation. He also revived the traditions of Vodou, later using them to consolidate his power with his claim of being a Vodou priest, himself. In an effort to make himself even more imposing, Duvalier deliberately modeled his image on that of Baron Samedi, one of the loa, or spirits, of Haitian Vodou. He often donned sunglasses in order to hide his eyes and talked with the strong nasal tone associated with the loa. The regime's propaganda stated that "PapaDoc was one with the loa, Jesus Christ and God himself".[11] The most celebrated image from the time shows a standing Jesus Christ with a hand on the shoulder of a seated PapaDoc, captioned, "I have chosen him".[31] Duvalier declared himself an "immaterial being" as well as "the Haitian flag" soon after his first election.[32] In 1964, he published a catechism in which the Lord's Prayer was reworded to pay tribute to Duvalier instead of God.[32][33]

Duvalier also held in his closet the head of former opponent Blucher Philogenes, who tried to overthrow him in 1963.[25]:132 He believed another political enemy was able to change into a black dog at will and had the militia begin killing black dogs on sight in the capital.[34]

Many books have been written about the Duvalier era in Haiti, the best known being Graham Greene's novel The Comedians.[36] Duvalier, however, dismissed the piece and referred to its author as "a cretin, a stool pigeon, sadistic, unbalanced, perverted, a perfect ignoramous [sic], lying to his heart's content, the shame of proud and noble England, a spy, a drug addict, and a torturer".[37] It was later made into a movie. Greene himself was declared persona non grata and barred from entering Haiti.[citation needed]

The British television journalist Alan Whicker featured Duvalier in a 1969 episode of Whicker's World, which includes an interview with the president.[38] Made by Yorkshire Television, part of Britain's ITV commercial network, the documentary is deeply revealing of Duvalier's character as well as of the state of Haiti in 1969.[citation needed]

The first authoritative book on the subject was PapaDoc: Haiti and its Dictator by Al Burt and Bernard Diederich, published in 1969,[39] though several others by Haitian scholars and historians have appeared since Duvalier's death in 1971. One of the most informative, Patrick Lemoine's Fort‑Dimanche: Dungeon of Death,[40] dealt specifically with victims of Fort-Dimanche, the prison Duvalier used for the torture and murder of his political opponents.[citation needed]

In 2007, British newspaper editor John Marquis published PapaDoc: Portrait of a Haitian Tyrant,[41] which relied in part on records from a 1968 espionage trial in Haiti to detail numerous attempts on Duvalier's life. The trial's defendant, David Knox, was a Bahamian director of information. Knox lost and was sentenced to death, but was later granted amnesty.[citation needed] Further information relating to the Duvalier family and their Bahamian links is referred to in Beyond Enkription - The Burlington Files by Bill Fairclough (aka Edward Burlington) (2015), Dolman Scott ISBN978-1909204720.

^Fatton, Robert, Jr. (2013). "Michel-Rolph Trouillot's State Against Nation: A Critique of the Totalitarian Paradigm". Small Axe. Duke University Press. 17 (3 42): 208. doi:10.1215/07990537-2379009. ISSN1534-6714. (Subscription required (help)). In 1963, Duvalier created the Parti de l'unité nationale—PUN (National Unity Party)—to constitute a single-party system. . . . the existence of a single party as one of the defining characteristics of the totalitarian nature of Duvalierism . . . the party had a thoroughly inconsequential role in the Duvalierist system.

^ abcGreene, Anne (2001). "Haiti: Historical Setting § François Duvalier, 1957–71". In Metz, Helen Chapin. Dominican Republic and Haiti. Country Studies. Research completed December 1999 (3rd ed.). Washington, D.C.: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress. pp. 288–289. ISBN978-0-8444-1044-9. ISSN1057-5294. LCCN2001023524. OCLC46321054. President Duvalier reigned supreme for fourteen years. Even in Haiti, where dictators had been the norm, François Duvalier gave new meaning to the term. Duvalier and his henchmen killed between 30,000 and 60,000 Haitians. The victims were not only political opponents, but women, whole families, whole towns. In April 1963, when an army officer suspected of trying to kidnap two of Duvalier's children took refuge in the Dominican chancery, Duvalier ordered the Presidential Guard to occupy the building. The Dominicans were incensed; President Juan Bosch Gaviño ordered troops to the border and threatened to invade. However, the Dominican commanders were reluctant to enter Haiti, and Bosch was obliged to turn to the [Organization of American States] to settle the matter.

^Tartter, Jean (2001). "Haiti: National Security § The Duvalier Era, 1957–86". In Metz, Helen Chapin. Dominican Republic and Haiti. Country Studies. Research completed December 1999 (3rd ed.). Washington, D.C.: Federal Research Division, Library of Congress. p. 464. ISBN978-0-8444-1044-9. ISSN1057-5294. LCCN2001023524. OCLC46321054. Although referred to as a militia, the VSN in fact became the Duvaliers' front-line security force. As of early 1986, the organization included more than 9,000 members and an informal circle of thousands more. The VSN acted as a political cadre, secret police and instrument of terror. It played a crucial political role for the regime, countering the influence of the armed forces, historically the government's primary source of power. The VSN gained its deadly reputation in part because members received no salary, although they took orders from the Presidential Palace. They made their living, instead, through extortion and petty crime. Rural members of the VSN, who wore blue denim uniforms, had received some training from the army, while the plainclothes members, identified by their trademark dark glasses, served as Haiti's criminal investigation force.

^"Haiti: Papa Doc's concordat (1966)". Concordat Watch. Archived from the original on 16 January 2015. This concordat let Dr. François Duvalier ('Papa Doc') nominate seven key clerics, thus ensuring their personal loyalty to him. It also stipulates that future appointments should be 'preferentially to members of the indigenous clergy'. Both these measures helped bring the Haitian church under Papa Doc's control.

^Inskeep, Steve; Green, Nadege (6 October 2014). "Duvalier's Death Causes Mixed Reactions In Miami's Little Haiti". Morning Edition. Washington, D.C.: NPR. Archived from the original on 30 November 2014. People with ties to Haiti are remembering one of that country's former dictators. Jean‑Claude 'Baby Doc' Duvalier died over the weekend. The old saying goes, speak nothing but good of the dead, but that is hard for Patrick Gaspard to do. He's a U.S. diplomat and a Haitian‑American. And after Duvalier's death, he tweeted, I'm thinking of the look in my mother's eyes when she talks about her brother Joel, who was disappeared by that dictator. Duvalier and his father before him ran one of the most repressive regimes in the western hemisphere.

^"Report on the situation of human rights in Haiti". Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Washington, D.C.: Organization of American States. 1979. ISBN978-0-8270-1094-9. OCLC8344995. Archived from the original on 21 March 2012. Current Haitian legislation contains a number of legal provisions that place considerable restrictions on the freedom of speech. The most important of these is the law of April 28, 1969:
Article 1. Communist activities, no matter what their form, are hereby declared crimes against the security of the State . . . The authors of an accomplices in crimes listed above shall receive the death penalty, and their goods and chattels shall be confiscated and sold for the benefit of the State

^ abKofele-Kale, Ndiva (2006). "The Cult of State Sovereignty". The International Law of Responsibility for Economic Crimes (2nd ed.). Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing. p. 261. ASINB00B5QULLQ. ISBN978-1-4094-9609-0. LCCN2006006433. OCLC64289359. OL7991049M. Not satisfied with being the Haitian flag, . . . Duvalier also declared himself 'an immaterial being' shortly after he became 'President-for-Life', and issued a Catechisme de la Révolution to the faithful containing the following version of the Lord's Prayer: 'Our Doc, who art in the National Palace for Life, hallowed be Thy name by present and future generations. Thy will be done in Port-au-Prince as it is in the provinces. Give us this day our new Haiti and forgive not the trespasses of those antipatriots who daily spit on our country; lead them into temptation, and, poisoned by their own venom, deliver them from no evil . . .'